Ahead of the European release of Konami’s Pro Evolution Soccer 2009 this Friday, the series’ legendary creator Shingo ‘Seabass’ Takatsuka has expressed his admiration for the game engine EA has developed for its FIFA series.

When asked by CVG if he would consider using EA’s game engine if given the chance, Seabass responded: “I would think about it really seriously because I still believe that EA's engine and animation is really superb, very good. The modelling of the characters is perhaps not really to my taste actually, so I might not take that part, but seriously I think their engine and their motion style is really great.”

And speaking of the Japanese approach to games development, Seabass added that he believes Japanese games development could learn a thing or two from the West.

“Right now next to us we have the Kojima Productions team but quite frankly we don't share game influence or information,” he admitted. “Sure the game's totally different, but we don't share game engines or anything like that. In my imagination at least I think EA share game engines amongst their Madden games and other sports games.

“This is not because we're fighting against each other but it's a little bit of a sad Japanese mentality where we do not share, we pursue our objectives more or less on our own. I think this is the factor which makes Japanese developers a little bit behind Western developers, because we don't share. Maybe that's the wrong key word – it's more about being effective in terms of making the game as a product.”

As reported last week, Seabass in the same interview explained that improving PES’ online functionality was one of his top priorities this year.